Trash bins are often conveniently secured to the inner face of an access door of a kitchen sink cabinet, for releasable engagement into the cabinet compartment under the sink. It is useful to have a trash bin the lid of which can be automatically opened and closed as the door is opened and closed. This of course more quickly frees one hand of the user for positioning trash within the bin. Such automatic lid-operating devices have been known for some time.
For instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,311,835 to Charles M. Johnson, lid 8 is hinged at 11 to trash bin 7 and biased in open position by a spring 13 interconnecting the rear wall of the bin with an upper section of the hinge 11. Bin 7 is anchored to the door 3 of a cabinet defining an opening 2 in which door 3 swings to close the compartment 4 in the cabinet. A spring bar 15 is connected to the top of lid 8 and comes in frictional contact with the front upper board 7 of the cabinet when the door 3 is closed, whereby the lid is closed against the bias of spring 13.
In this patent to Johnson, as shown in FIG. 1, the large angle (about 45.degree.) made between lid bar 15 and the plane passing through the bottom edge of top board 17, which is necessary since that blade 15 is straight and parallel to lid 8, does mean that one will need to use relatively substantial force to close the lid, and that the initial closing effort is much larger than that of the final closing. Also, the spring 13 cannot be used to also open the door.
A drawback in existing trash bins is that one always needs to have at least one free hand to grip the access door of the kitchen sink cabinet, in order to pull open same when access to the trash bin is required. This is not advantageous, in that it occasionally happens that both hands are required to carry the garbage load to the trash bin, and thus said load must be put on the ground or on the kitchen counter before opening the door.